“I would just like to take a moment to thank and the commend the officers for the incident of the night of Dec. 24 at the police department,” Maniago said while speaking Wednesday evening at a Board of Public Safety meeting. “Their actions went above-and-beyond.”

Elaine Rothenburg, 66, was charged with threatening, reckless endangerment, second-degree breach of peace and interfering with police on Dec. 24 after she positioned herself in front of a doorway used by officers to get to their police cruisers and stood with the handgun raised and in a shooting stance, according to police.

She yelled about hating cops and stated “what are you doing, shoot me!” and “what are you scared?” according to police, and raised the gun and pointed it at officers, yelling “boom boom boom,” police said.

After a brief standoff, Rothenberg admitted that the gun was a fake and threw it down on the ground, according to police, and was arrested and taken into custody.

The officer in charge at the scene on Christmas Eve did “an outstanding job” of command and control, Maniago said Wednesday.

“The person that was waving the weapon around, which later turned out to be a pellet gun, but was not known at that time, was incoherent at times,” Maniago said. “It was a very dangerous situation.”

Maniago praised the response of the officers on duty and asked those in attendance to consider the ramifications that would have resulted from an alternate series of events.

“The officers exercised discretion and de-escalation techniques in order to have a favorable outcome in that incident, and I think, in the climate we’re in right now for police departments, we should be commending the officers for doing something like that,” the chief said. “And I just want to bring it to everybody’s attention that that situation could have turned out devastating, on many different levels - not only for the family of the woman, but for the officers, because if they had to use deadly force, nobody wants to be involved in that.”

Maniago said he hopes he never has to be in a situation where deadly force is used.

“It’s a traumatic event,” he said. “So I just want to say thank you to those officers. They did an outstanding job. Everybody went home safe that night, and their training kicked in. They knew what they were doing, and I think we’re very fortunate for the officers that we have in this city.”

Rothenberg is next scheduled to appear in Bantam Superior Court on Feb. 19. Other details of the case are unavailable as the file has been statutorily sealed, according to the state’s judicial database.